Madonna Weekend

The video for Madonna’s new song Give Me All Your Luvin’ is now available online. See below.

Madonna will perform during halftime at the Super Bowl on Sunday.

After all these years, Madonna still knows how to get in your face.

Here’s Madge flexing all her muscles yesterday at her Super Bowl press conference. Nothing makes Madonna happier than talking about Madonna. This is the Madonna I love(d) the most: unapologetically narcissistic, just enough effort but not too much effort, definitely not the bad joke Playboyus Maximus guy, and even a little mean... like saying into a hot mic that she loathes hydrangeas.

I was young enough and old enough to watch Madonna writhe on stage at the VMAs live hoping my dad wouldn’t come into the room. My point is, again, that it is always my preference to fist pump for Madonna. This is my comfort zone. I would rather be fist pumping for her than pissing on her. And, for the most part during her career, she made it easy. She backed her sh-t up.

So of course I can’t wait to see her perform on Sunday. It helps that she’s confirmed she’s doing 3 old songs and 1 new song. That new song will probably be Give Me All Your Luvin’ which I’ve already briefly analysed here. To summarise: it’s terrible. And that line still makes me crazy:

Don’t play the stupid game

Still, and always, the worst lyricist ever, right?

The “the” before the “stupid” is infuriating. And it highlights her lack of musical imagination. One, two, three, four, finding words that rhyme with door. Five, six, seven, eight, who can tell me why she’s late?

I get it that she wants to stick with meaningless pop. The problem though is that a lot of people are doing meaningless pop a lot better than she is. What can possibly be worse than mediocre meaningless pop? If Give Me All Your Luvin’ is any indication, mediocre meaningless pop seems to be what we’ll find all over MDNA, her new album. She’ll be touring in support of it very soon. Madonna earns a lot of money on tour. Because she charges a lot of money to see her on tour. Here’s how she justifies it in a new interview:

“So start saving your pennies now. People spend $300 on crazy things all the time, things like handbags. So work all year, scrape the money together, and come to my show. I’m worth it.”

I would totally pay $300 to go to a show that’s worth it. I once went to a Foo Fighters show and Dave Grohl said at the very beginning that they were playing for 3 hours, that he wasn’t letting anyone go home, and that we would have a good time goddamn it, and then totally delivered. That cost me $50.

Jay-Z and Kanye West performed for almost 3 hours too. That was $200.

Bon Iver regularly jams for 3 hours for the audience. Haven’t been yet but I doubt it’ll be over $100.

I could go on.

Madonna does not go on. Madonna’s shows now are like music videos. Here are some purple lights! Oh look over there, the pink ones are flashing! Do you like my new outfit? It’s DSquared. Up at the screen, up at the screen, a pre-produced video of me in various poses.

Dance move, dance move, dance move...

Forgettable song followed by f-cked up arrangement of Borderline followed by forgettable song...

Has it been 90 minutes yet?

Yeah?

We’re done.

Thanks for coming! Don’t forget to buy the DVD!

(The DVD will be $60.)

That’s a Madonna show in these Madonna times.

She’s like a robot. She barely says hello. She’s too busy making sure Katy Perry’s fans want to be her fans too. This, I think, is what’s happened:

Madonna’s not interested in keeping her old fans. The same way she desperately doesn’t want to be 54. I’m too old to be her fan. The younger her fans, the younger she can keep pretending she is.